Community Gardens, creating jobs and skills for the future

“People in the neighborhood, who I didn’t even know, would wave, give a thumbs up,” says Hector Castro, a resident of 2100 Lakeside Men’s Homeless Shelter in Cleveland, Ohio. “The people getting in their cars at the end of the day would wave goodbye or ask how I make the garden look so good.”

As a Lakeside resident, Hector is one of nearly 25 homeless men responsible for the care of a community garden that this summer produced over 600 pounds of tomatoes, among other things, to supplement the nearly 1,000 meals served daily at Lakeside shelter.

The USDA began recognizing the idea of community farming around 1993 and using the term Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). The basic idea of a CSA is a group of individuals who pledge to support a farm operation, creating, in a sense, a community farm. In many cases, a farmer will sell shares to the public, in exchange for boxes of farmed products. But, as CSA’s morph to meet the needs of varied income levels, the pledge of support can come in forms other than monetary. Some may donate their time, while others donate supplies. The end result is a shared functioning garden, an improvement of the appearance and environmental impact of the space and an opportunity to improve a community’s access to fresh, local food. These farms, like the one Hector works on in his Cleveland shelter and like many others throughout the country, are proving that through joint community efforts we can achieve a fresh local food system in any urban setting.

Community Farms are accomplishing a variety of things but at the core they are building community relationships where once there may have been none, they are creating a space for education and training, and they are bringing fresh local food directly to people in the city who might normally not have access to it.

It’s easy to look at a man like Hector and find ways in which we are different from or better off than him. But, with the news released by the USDA in November of this year that 14.6% of US residents went hungry in 2008, we shouldn’t ignore that a large number of us share something with Hector, homeless or not.

To hear a number like 14.6% is easy. It sounds small, manageable. As if to say 85.4% of US residents aren’t hungry, therefore we’ve received a “B” on the hunger grading scale. But, unfortunately we aren’t just looking for a passing grade, we are talking about human lives and the ability to sustain ourselves. The USDA survey shows that 17 million households experienced food insecurity, a lack of access to food, at some point in 2008. That is up from 13 million households in 2007. This is not the kind of “B” that you decide you deserve and move on.

A lot of things have changed in the food industry since the day of the Victory Gardens during World War II. When Eleanor Roosevelt called to US residents to plant Victory Gardens in the 1940′s, she was addressing a lack of food in general, asking US citizens to plant gardens because the food supply couldn’t support us. Eleanor hadn’t heard of high fructose corn syrup and didn’t have to contend with genetically modified soy beans. The advances in food modification are making processed foods more accessible and less expensive for families, while organic and fresh foods become more expensive and less attainable. Today we call to urban community farming to not only make fresh, healthy, local food accessible to all but also to educate the community, young and old, about healthier ways of eating and living.

“I believe that Urban Gardening will be the main source of food in the near future because of the rapid changes in the cost of living,” says Dr. James Edward Brown, Professor of Horticulture at Fort Valley University. “From an economic standpoint, Urban Gardening can solve many problems of families who struggle to buy food.”

If Urban Farming is to become our main source of food, as Dr. Edwards states, what will need to do to achieve an urban farming system that can sustain a metropolitan city? And, if we don’t take the steps, does that mean that eventually the resources for fresh food will no longer be there? Change requires action and action is only as strong as the community that supports it.

In a slowly developing neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, work is just beginning on a half-acre of land recently donated to Port City Development Center’s Project Grow. The program is dedicated to providing fair wage employment for adults with disabilities and training in the arts and the earth, according to Project Grow’s co-founder, James Ragsdale. Port City’s first micro-CSA broke ground on two vacant lots behind their existing buildings on N. Williams St in March of 2009. Through the work of Port City’s clients and neighborhood volunteers, they farmed enough food to support three local CSA members during the 2009 growing season.

“Some of the clients grew up on farms,” says Ragsdale. “They bring unique ideas to the process that maybe we hadn’t thought of.” The clients help with all aspects of the farm, from planting seeds to grow starts indoors to buildings fences and chicken coops. Standing in the chicken coop, one of the clients tells me how he assisted in building the new storage shed that they just recently completed. He is an older gentleman with graying hair and a slight build.

“We just need to paint it,” he tells me and James reminds him that they already stained it. “I still think it should be painted,” he leans in a little closer to tell me, grinning.

*article is continued but is left off of the site because it is out for publication

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